Replacing CPU+Mobo, prep and questions.

[F13Bubba]

Hey Y'all,

It's been a minute since I've been active, but I need your help. After 6 years with my current PC, I'm finally upgrading. I bought a Ryzen 7 3800XT and a B550 board, as my 5950k is well past it's prime, and is killing my video editing workflow. I'm going to be installing today, but I want to make sure I'm doing this the easiest way possible. A few questions:

Should I do a fresh install of Windows, or is their a way to make the transfer and keep all my programs? (And would it be worth it, or is a fresh install best?)

Any tips you can offer for things I need to do to best prep for the change? Like I said, it's been 6 years since I've done this, and I'm rusty.

I appreciate y'all!

[ir_cow]

I would recommend a fresh install, especially switching chipsets and platforms. Windows 10 does handle it better then Win7 which usually fails to even boot if you switch chipsets, but it will be a mess if you don't do a fresh install. Grab the newest ISO build from microsoft website and image it a flash drive. much quicker install vs DVD.

Since you will have the flash drive, make a folder called drivers on the flash drive and download all the motherboard drivers, graphics, firefox, chrome, etc now before you swap computers. That way you wont have to even use the godawful Internet Explorer / Edge.

For safety I unplug my secondary drives so that windows doesn't reformat them or something stupid (its happend to me). You will have to reinstall all the programs you use since the regigery files will be gone, but all your data will be safe on another drive.